Here follows the Letter to all Teachers, from
Primary School to University:

The Environment and Education : "Save Rock
Art"

"Schools today, taken in their broadest sense, should
be priviledged places characterised by a profound interaction
between teachers and learners; sacred places where conscious
and unconscious can fuse together, the centre for the furthering
of wisdom, through words, gestures and examples, a melting pot
which creates more energy than it absorbs; a prodigious place,
perhaps the last place where human survival can be planned and
guaranteed. Schools must be able to open up to the continuing
change in society, what's more they should be able to significantly
control the process of change.

The word "environment", as all words, is ambiguous
and has multiple meanings: we should take it to mean "anthropological
field or deposit" (there are practically no more real natural
fields left on earth ) with special physical and cultural stratifications
; the word means the site of the "personal history"
of all men, of all those who inhabit the world, and have their
individual "niche" on it; it is a data-base, an eco-museum,
a source of information, education, evocation, intuition; the
enviroment is an anthology, a reader, an ABC book of behaviour;
a stage on which we play out the daily tragi-comedy of life,
forever suspended between macrocosm and microcosm, between costs
and revenue , expansion and annihilation, reality and fantasy.

Schools, with a capital "S", are part of the landscape,
of the territory, of space and time: a definite space and a
definite time.

The interconnecting "filaments" of the multitude
of infinite elements that make up each environment can and must
pass through schools and become the subject of experiments,
trials, tentative connections between differing threads, so
as to find a hypothetical order which can give us the illusion
that we are emerging from caos. Through the use of the environment
as a resource, schools must become open institutions which have
a formidably equipped laboratory at hand, practically free of
charge: the environment. Schools must learn to use this pedagogical/
didactic supermarket as a souce of information which is extraordinarily
useful, popular, accessible, and to accomplish an inniovative
task : the repossessing of anthopological culture, of individual
and group identity,social identity on the part of each learner,
all students, all human beings.

The invitation to take part in this copernican - pacific -
revolution is being sent to teachers at all schools. The IFRAO
- International Federation of Rock Art Organizations - World
Congress is an opportunity that should not be missed.

It will be held by AURA
from 10 to 14 July 2000 at Alice Springs, Australia .

All the sections of the Congress are important if you want
to understand the cultural value of Rock Art as the expression
of the most ancient sign of Man's spirituality.

In particular the "Rock
Art, Education and Ethics " Symposium is aimed
at teachers, researchers, students, and will offer the chance
to compare methodology, experiences, programmes and projects
in the field of Cultural Heritage, and its links to teaching
and education, so as to plot and define the role of schools
in forming the conscience of young people; hopefully their sense
of civic duty and their solid scientific background will make
up the strongest factor in the protection, conservation and
appreciation of the cultural heritage that Rock Art Archaeology
discovers , researches, and consigns to future generations.

The environment in general, and Rock Art in particular, should
be considered as something we have borrowed from our children
rather than inherited from out parents. All over the world,
teachers and schools can play a fundamental role, in trying
to win the wager for the progress of Man. Please send me your
ideas, opinions, abstracts and papers.